


ebb and flow

by marit



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (a bit), Avoidance, Bucky's had awhile to figure some things out but Steve's not quite there yet, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not really angst but sort of melancholy, Now vs. then, Sad people in love, Turns out reunions aren't always easy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:20:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4294020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marit/pseuds/marit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Are you avoiding me?” Bucky asks, and it’s so straightforward and so sudden after so long spent skirting around everything that it throws Steve off, leads to an honest answer, which is quite simply:</p><p>“Yes.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	ebb and flow

**Author's Note:**

> I find these types of fics where Steve just flails emotionally and they're dumb and in love and casual quite easy to finish. Maybe that'll become my thing.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

  **now.**

Steve isn’t sure what he expected from Bucky’s return but it isn’t this. It’s too quiet.

He returns home one Tuesday afternoon mid-July, arms laden with groceries wet from the rain, to find Bucky in his apartment.

He knows someone’s there as soon as he’s outside his door. He can’t say how precisely, except for that sense that he’s somehow gained from too many years of being shot at or otherwise attacked unexpectedly. He sets the bags down carefully, near-silently, in the hall, and then hesitates--the list of people who know where this apartment is located is very low, and Natasha helped him cover any tracks left by its purchase so he’s fairly confident that it’s almost untraceable. So, he does the perhaps foolish thing and simply opens his door, careful to keep it between him and the apartment, on the off-chance that he can avoid unnecessary property damage by flinging it open.

It takes a moment for his brain to process, because he is suddenly slammed with so many conflicting emotions that he can’t decide which one should be dealt with first. Wariness, surprise, elation, annoyance all battle for first place. But there, standing near the wall perpendicular, is Bucky, and Steve doesn’t say anything, just stares. His clothing is worn and dark but clean enough. He has a backpack on and a partially folded umbrella in his right hand. He’s thin but apparently uninjured. He doesn’t explain himself, say any of the multitude of things he could say after disappearing for over a year. He simply looks at Steve, his expression blank, until he pulls Steve out of his own shock with a nod of his chin toward the doorway and says, “You should bring your things in.”

And it’s those words more than the actual appearance of Bucky in his apartment that nearly break Steve. Because he’s seen Bucky already and he’s known that he’s alive, even if he’s been silent and far away. But although he had heard his voice, it had been laced with violence and frustration and confusion, and it has been years since Steve heard him say anything so mundane and obvious as “You should bring your things in.”

Steve does what he says because he doesn’t know if he can do anything else without falling apart. He gets the bags and takes them to the kitchen and puts everything away and says nothing. Bucky simply watches him, still unreadable.

He doesn’t ask where Bucky’s been, or why he’s there now. He figures it matters more that he _is_ there, that so far he’s remained there for what amounts to a significant period of time. He pushes away the unease every time he turns his back for even a moment, the lurking sense of _stranger_ that comes from the different way Bucky carries his own weight now, the unfriendly and distant stare levelled at him, the other differences that shriek at Steve’s self-preservation skills every time he’s not looking directly at Bucky to know that it is him, that it’s not some random person standing in his apartment.

“Do you want to eat?” Steve asks eventually, when he can no longer pretend to be rearranging the food in his cupboards.

Bucky just shrugs unhelpfully, so Steve sets to making a large amount of pancakes because he doesn’t know what Bucky will eat anymore and that seems bland and safe enough. He piles the plates with fruit as well, puts them on opposite ends of the dining room table and sits down to eat.

They’ve exchanged barely over ten words between them, and it is uncomfortable and strange but Steve is still scared to say the wrong thing, to break the quiet in the wrong way. So he takes what feels the safest option: he keeps quiet because he doesn’t trust himself to do otherwise.

Bucky eventually sits down stiffly, and then eats so efficiently that he’s done before Steve even though he started later. He places his fork and knife carefully on his plate, and then carries it to the sink, where he proceeds to start cleaning all of the dishes.

Steve watches him, his own food forgotten. He can’t stop staring, now. It occurs to him in a weird sort of distant way that the Winter Soldier is doing dishes in his apartment. He wants to get up and touch, to make sure Bucky is real and not some silent apparition Steve has conjured out of loneliness and an entirely separate grasping, constant need for his best friend.

He suddenly finds himself standing, and Bucky tenses but doesn’t turn to face him directly.

“I’m-- I just--” and that’s all Steve gets out, followed by a vague hand motion towards his bedroom, because he suddenly needs to get away, to remove Bucky from his sightline just in case he’s not real or not here to stay, because to do this any longer would be to start to normalize it, to start to hope. His best friend, who for too long he thought was dead, who quite possibly only remembers Steve in an abstract sort of way, is saying and doing utterly mundane things in his apartment and he can’t stand it, really, if it’s not going to last.

So he leaves. He shuts a door between them and tries not to hope that Bucky will still be there when he opens it again.

 

**then.**

Steve opens the door at a quiet knock.

“Mr. Rogers. How are you?” Bucky says, curt, in a bad English accent for some reason.

“Mr. Barnes,” he answers as Bucky pushes around him to enter the apartment. His mom is at work, just barely into one of those horribly long overnight shifts that pay better than normal but leave her exhausted. She’s been feeling sick lately but she insisted because she hadn’t done one for awhile and they need the money. Steve is left feeling strange and alone in their apartment. He keeps thinking he’ll get used to it, being alone, but he never does.

So Bucky is a relief, not least because Steve hasn’t seen him for over a week. It’s like that, sometimes. They’ll see one another every day until they don’t, until things come up and they get busy.

Bucky waves him away when Steve tries to serve him part of the dinner he was making for himself. “I already ate,” he says, falling into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “I’m just here for your company.”

He fiddles with a pencil Steve left on the table, taps it against the tabletop. Steve winces, takes it out of his hand. “Stop trying to wreck my things,” he says, sitting down across from him at the small table. He only has a limited amount of money for art supplies (limited being zero cents at the moment) and he can’t have Bucky wrecking the end of his pencils because he can never seem to keep still.

Bucky just smiles at him in response. He’s gorgeous like this, relaxed and happy, comfortable in Steve’s space. He wishes he could somehow etch it into his memory, hold onto the exact shape of Bucky’s mouth when he smiles, the relaxed slope of his body as he leans back in the chair.

He tells Steve about the men at his new job as Steve eats. He waits for him to finish before he cuts off his own story about his boss, asks, “Can I kiss you now?”

Steve’s smiling as Bucky pulls him forward, as his hip hits the corner of the table and Bucky laughs, apologizing, into the space between their mouths before they meet in the middle.

 

**now.**

This isn’t how it was supposed to go.

The first time Steve thought Bucky might be dead, it had spurned him into action. The second time, he had seen it all (or thought he had) with his own eyes and it had done the exact opposite, left him feeling numb and distant.

Now it seems that the pattern continues: The first time Steve found out Bucky was still alive, the sheer relief and elation had been overwhelming but had left him still functional with the need to keep Bucky safe, to touch and hold and reassure one another. The second time Steve found out Bucky was still alive… well, here he is, sitting on his bed, fingers knotted into the duvet as if it can somehow help him keep himself together.

He’s fine in the end. He just sits, quiet and holding on.

He stays in his room for hours. He fiddles with his phone a bit, eventually texts Natasha and Sam to let them know Bucky showed up at his apartment. Natasha just sends back _ok._ and Steve’s brow furrows. He doesn’t respond. There’s nothing to say to that, really.

Sam’s response is more typical: _Everything all right?_

 _More or less,_ Steve sends back.

_Talk tomorrow?_

_Sure,_ Steve texts before setting his phone aside, leaving it on silent. He falls back onto his bed and then just stares at the ceiling. He feels like he should have more thoughts, but his mind is oddly blank now.

When he emerges it’s the middle of the night and Bucky’s still there. He’s sitting on the couch and the only light comes from the street through the large windows. The apartment is cleaner than Steve left it, than it has been in awhile, and it’s so normal, Bucky cleaning up after him, that it’s discordant.

Bucky doesn’t look at him, but he obviously knows Steve is there.

“Do you need anything?” Steve asks for lack of anything better to say. “Sorry I’m terrible at this” doesn’t seem quite right for all that it’s true. “I thought I would be fine with you being here but I’m not” seems equally inappropriate.

Bucky shakes his head in response and still says nothing.

“There’s a spare room if you want to stay,” Steve ventures next. “You’re welcome to it. And anything else. Whatever you want.” He doesn’t know, now, whether it would be better or worse for Bucky to stay, except that he desperately wants him close but that he simultaneously can barely face him, that he wants to flee back to his bedroom.

Bucky nods, says, “Sure” in a tone that is surprisingly light. It isn’t at all reflected in his face or his posture, which is tense and just a bit uncertain.

Steve wants to ask him why he’s here, why now after so long, after Steve had almost given him up for permanently out of his life. He wants to ask what Bucky has been doing. He wants to ask what he remembers. He has so many questions and doesn’t think he can voice any of them.

Bucky seems to give him a chance to say something more, but when Steve remains silent, he stands and picks up his things.

“Bucky?” Steve says. Bucky tenses and turns toward Steve halfway down the hall to the room. “Thanks. For cleaning up,” he says, even though there are twenty other more important things that he could, that he _should_ say.

“Yeah. Sure.” He gets in response. It’s not sarcastic or cruel, just a straightforward acknowledgement. He waits, again, for Steve to say more but Steve, again, can’t seem to, so he just nods and turns away again. He pauses at the bedroom door, though. “Goodnight, Steve.”

“Night, Buck,” Steve responds, his voice cracking a bit on the name. He’s surprisingly tired, suddenly. He stands in the dark for a few minutes after the quiet click of the bedroom door shutting, before he gets himself a glass of water and retreats back to his own room.

 

**then.**

“You’ve got to drink something. You know this stuff by now,” Bucky says, setting a glass of water on the table beside the bed with more force than is necessary. Some of the liquid escapes over the edge of the glass and onto his hand, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

It’s just over two weeks since his mom’s funeral and Steve is sick because life is unfair and that’s what his body does. He gets stressed and then catches some random illness or just falls apart for no apparent reason.

Steve doesn’t answer, mostly because it seems like more effort than it’s worth. He just buries further down into the blankets and wishes Bucky would leave so that he could feel horrible without an audience. His body hurts and he’s exhausted because his coughing keeps waking him up, and there’s an ache in his chest that has more to do with the absence of his mom than any illness. He keeps half waking up and expecting her to come in with soft words and gentle hands, encouraging him and trying to stop him from feeling too miserable for himself.

She doesn’t come in, though. The apartment is silent until Bucky arrives after he’s done work, and then again when Steve talks him into reluctantly leaving. He’s worse today than yesterday, though, the flu setting in fully.

“Should leave. Gonna get you sick,” Steve mumbles into the blanket.

“Nah, the germs like you more,” Bucky answers. He smooths a hand over Steve’s forehead and into his hair. It must feel gross and sweaty, but his hand is marvelously cool against his sore head. It takes all of his effort to resist pushing into it.

“Not how it works,” he says to avoid saying something self-pitying. Bucky’s hand retreats as he leaves the side of the bed, and then it gets darker and marginally quieter as he shuts the bedroom door and pulls the curtains. There’s two quiet thuds as Bucky pulls his boots off, the soft noise of his coat being dropped onto the floor as well. The bed dips under his weight as he sits against the headboard to Steve’s left.

“Sit up. Drink,” he says, tugging at Steve until he makes an annoyed sound and reluctantly sits up enough to satisfy Bucky. He then reaches over Steve, picks up the glass and hands it to him. “Either you do this yourself or I’m holding it to your mouth until you drink.”

Steve obeys, drinking about half of it before he sets it back onto the table and glares at Bucky, as if that will make any sort of point, before falling heavily back down into a more prone position. Bucky just ignores his glare, though, pushes Steve around so that he can rearrange the pillows so that Steve’s in a less flat position. It’s annoying and he’s bossy, but it will help in the end, Steve knows, so he just continues to glare instead of actually protesting.

Eventually he lets them both settle, and they’re silent for a moment. Bucky curls his arm around to place his hand back onto Steve’s forehead, and it’s for both of their benefits, really. Bucky can test his temperature and Steve gets the brief coolness of his skin, skin that quickly warms and provides little relief but thankfully settles along Steve’s hairline anyway.

“You’re not too bad,” Bucky says, quiet. “We’ve dealt with worse.” Steve knows he’s talking about the flu and that he’s objectively correct, but right now Steve feels like he’s never felt so awful before.

He gives in then, rolls onto his side. The piled pillows help his trajectory so that he ends up between them and Bucky, his face against Bucky’s hip. He brings his right hand up to grasp at Bucky’s left, which had settled low on his stomach, so that he’s nearly clinging to Bucky’s side, all along his leg. His right hand is still against Steve’s head, more in his hair now, and his fingers comb through his hair briefly.

“I really miss her,” Steve says quietly to Bucky’s hip, like it’s a secret.

“I know, Stevie,” Bucky answers, his grip firm.

 

**now.**

The problem is this: Steve feels, for some reason, horribly panicked at the idea of actually talking to Bucky in any serious capacity. There’s the fear he’ll say something wrong, of course, but his own response is disproportionate to what the actual situation warrants. He knows Bucky, after all. Or he did. But that’s also the problem, because Steve doesn’t know how to delineate what he knows from what he no longer does. He doesn’t know how to start filling in those gaps.

Now that Bucky’s in his apartment, he can’t stop overlaying it with everything he remembers about living with Bucky the first time around. He can’t disassociate the Bucky he has now from the Bucky he had then, and it’s utterly unuseful. He has to be able to, he knows, because Bucky deserves a chance to make his own choices free of whatever influence Steve might accidentally have. Steve has to do better than this.

He can’t seem to help it, though, so as a result he keeps his distance. He wants to ask all sorts of questions, but he’s scared of the answers and he’s scared to ask the wrong thing, so he doesn’t. He just says little at all. He wants to touch but he can’t, so he sits across the room where there’s no chance of him doing it without thinking. He ends up avoiding Bucky even as they sit in the same spaces simply because he doesn’t know how else not to mess everything up.

Bucky, for some reason, stays. He looks wary but not completely uncomfortable. He seems fine, relatively. Better than the last time Steve saw him anyway. He doesn’t know exactly how much Bucky remembers from his past (from their past) but it’s at least enough that he doesn’t seem surprised by Steve, by his mannerisms or his interests or by anything else. Or maybe he’s just not surprised by much at all anymore.

It should be more awkward than it is. After the first day, Steve falls into a sort of routine and Bucky seems content to go along with it. They spend time together, but only moderately and with few words exchanged. It’s nothing groundbreaking but it’s more than Steve had before, and that has to be enough for now.

On the third day, he gets a text message from Natasha that says, _You’re screwing this up, Rogers._

Steve’s not even surprised, is the thing. And it’s true, he knows it is for all that he wants to deny it, so he just responds with, _Have you been talking to Sam?_

 _Obviously._ A beat, and then another: _Do better._

 _That’s helpful, thanks,_ Steve can’t help sending back, because he’s frustrated. She won’t put up with it, he knows that, so it’ll be cut short anyway.

_You don’t need my help. You know what you’re doing. Fix it._

Steve wants to fling his phone away, not because of anything she’s said but more because it’s what he already knows and he can feel it all slipping away from him. _Easier said than done,_ he settles on, because he can’t think of anything to respond with that doesn’t sound self-pitying.

_Most things are. Fix it now while it’s still early._

_Yeah. I know._

_Great,_ she responds, and then before Steve even has a chance to answer, says, _My work is done. Goodnight._

Steve smiles, which was undoubtedly her aim, to end it on a bit of blitheness. It’s the middle of the day for him, but he sends back, anyway, _Thanks. Goodnight._

_No problem. :)_

Steve doesn’t message her again because she clearly meant that to be the end of the conversation, and he suspects that any further texts would have been equally of a “Get it together, Rogers” nature. She’s right, of course, but that doesn’t mean he wants to discuss it at length.

Bucky’s sitting at the kitchen table, reading something on the laptop screen with intense concentration. Steve searches for something to say that isn’t about his basic needs or whether he’s comfortable. He lands on, quite straightforwardly, “Anything interesting?”

He thinks of Bucky were still someone who jumped, he would have there. He settles on looking a bit startled.

“Whatever you’re reading,” Steve says, nodding to the laptop when no answer comes. His face heats, and he hopes he’s not blushing. He feels stupid now, and ashamed. Someone he would still call his best friend gets surprised if Steve asks him anything. Great.

“No,” Bucky finally says, blinking at the laptop screen before looking back at Steve. “BBC News. British politics. It’s… fine,” he says, clearly not quite sure how to answer the question.

Steve realizes he has nowhere else to go with this line of inquiry. He knows very little about current British politics, even though now he feels a bit like he should. Not just for the sake of this conversation, but just in general. It’d probably be useful.

Bucky seems to sense that, adds a bit hurriedly, as if to reassure, “I was just curious. It’s not very interesting. They’re a bit messed up, but most countries are.”

“Oh,” Steve says, eloquent. “Yeah.” He mentally freezes then, his mind spinning to come up with some sort of better response. It takes too long, though. Bucky opens his mouth as if to try to keep the conversation going but then shuts it again and shrinks in on himself a bit. Steve hates himself for causing that to happen.

Bucky turns back to the screen and Steve stands up with more force than he means to, the armchair he was sitting on scraping against the wood flooring.

“I’m going to go to the store,” he says, just for something to say and some reason to escape. “Do you need anything?”

“No. Thanks,” Bucky says, not looking away from the laptop.

Steve hesitates briefly. He wants to apologize. He wants to put his head on Bucky’s knee and tell him how sorry he is for all of it, for not finding him soon enough, for decades lost, for not holding it together right now.

Instead he just nods and flees again, as is becoming habit. He makes it down two flights of stairs before he’s realized he left behind his wallet, and that it’s rush hour and he doesn’t really want to deal with the crowds of people anyway. It’s worse when there’s more people. It only takes one person recognizing him for the rest to fall in line.

He stands on the step for a moment, frozen, before sitting down where he is. He’s still up enough flights that hopefully no one will see him. He finds he doesn’t care much right now anyway.

He lets his head fall into his hands and simply breathes for a moment, waits until the feeling in his throat that wants to escape as tears dissipates. He stays that way for too long, until one of the above doors to the stairwell clicks open and shut again. The person coming down has the nearly silent steps of the well-trained, so it’s either Bucky or someone potentially dangerous, and, well, Steve’s not really in the mood for a fight so he’s not sure which option would be worse.

He stops on the step beside Steve, and eventually he is forced to look up and over at him or have it become awkward. It’s Bucky, of course, looking at Steve with a sort of concentration that he reserves for difficult problems and the many buttons of the remote control that don't seem to do a thing.

“You left your money behind, and I didn’t see you leave the building,” Bucky says with a bit of a shrug, as if Steve had asked why he is there. He’s not sure which is the more important piece of information, there: that Bucky watches for him when he leaves, or that he decided to come looking when he didn’t see him.

“Yeah, I realized right where I am sitting now,” he answers, instead of acknowledging the newly acquired information.

“It’s a good spot,” Bucky says, and it sounds so close to his old sense of humour that it goes straight to the pain in Steve’s chest.

“It is.” If his laugh is a bit watery, Bucky doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Want to head back? You’ve been here awhile.”

Steve nods, resolute, stands up with more determination than it probably warrants but it feels necessary right now, when he sort of just wants to remain on the step.

Bucky makes a sort of aborted hand gesture, like he was going to grasp Steve’s arm, but lets his hand drop into a closed fist instead. He lets Steve pass him up the stairs by a few steps before following him back to the apartment, where he puts on a documentary about feats of engineering in Japan and makes them perfectly steeped tea.

 

**then.**

The creak of the floor outside their door precedes Bucky’s entrance, his fumble with the key at the sticky lock. Steve could get up and just unlock the door for him, but instead he looks back down at his drawing with more concentration than is necessary, using the light filtering through the small window while it lasts.

The door opens and closes with its usual amount of noise, and then Bucky halts as he apparently notices Steve sitting at the table. He doesn’t say anything, although the air thickens with the tension. Steve’s hand stops its movement, if only because he’s now following Bucky’s too closely while trying not to look up.

Eventually Bucky moves again, disappears into the bedroom that is ostensibly Steve’s but really gets used by the both of them. He reappears in a cleaner shirt, a pair of worn pants that have a tear right below the left knee that he keeps saying he’ll fix but never does. There’s the sound of the water in the kitchen, and then the old chair that Steve’s had around his whole life complains as Bucky falls into it, apparently done with his post-work clean-up in record time.

It’s silent, then, and minutes before Steve dares to look up to see what Bucky’s doing. Staring at him, is the answer. He quickly drops his gaze back to his drawing again, even though the light from the window is too bad at this point for him to really do much more on it. He leans on his hand anyway to block Bucky from his view further, tries to seem like he still cares about the piece.

When he finally looks up again, Bucky’s still looking at him, but he’s got a book in his lap now that he’s playing with the edges of.

Steve looks back down.

He looks out of the corner of his eye, and Bucky’s still staring, so he in turn stares more resolutely at the paper he hasn’t put anything down on for minutes and ignores the feeling of eyes on him.

Bucky asks, “How much longer do I have to keep doing this?” and Steve fights a smile, because he’s not even annoyed anymore, really, after their useless argument that morning, just mostly proving some inexplicable point through pure stubbornness.

“Forever,” he answers.

“All right,” Bucky says, congenial sounding enough. He stands up but doesn’t take his eyes off Steve as he backs into the kitchen. “Did you eat?”

He hasn’t because he forgot again, too wrapped up in not letting the natural light go to waste before it disappeared to remember. It must show on his still downturned face because he doesn’t even answer properly before Bucky’s eyes narrow.

He reaches behind himself, somehow finds the pan without looking and places it on the stovetop. There’s the sound of a drawer, utensils rattling, and then a large crash as a pot falls to the floor.

Steve looks up at that, because it’s pretty hard to ignore, only to find Bucky still looking at him despite the odds.

“Why was that there?” Bucky asks, sounding less annoyed than he perhaps should.

The answer is “I thought about food and got as far as getting a pot” but Steve doesn’t say that. Instead he says, “Are you really making dinner without actually looking at it?”

Bucky nods, smiles a bit, hesitant and endearing and annoying and so horrifically himself that Steve has to look away again or he might say something stupidly sentimental and ridiculous.

He refuses to look up again through the resulting sounds, and eventually Bucky remarks, “This is really hard.” There’s a bit of a laugh in his voice like he can’t quite believe what he’s doing, and Steve once again fights a smile of his own.

There’s another moment where Steve doesn’t look at him, but then he gives in, sighs, and pushes himself away from the table to join Bucky in the kitchen proper.

“You can stop now. You’ve made your point,” Steve says, his clipped tone offset entirely by the way his hand settles on Bucky’s lower back, drifts a bit under his shirt, because he can never seem to help it, really, touching Bucky when he has the chance, when they’re alone and it’s quiet and they’re both in good enough moods despite being at one another’s throats earlier that same day. It happens. It’s bound to, being together so often and both prone to be stubborn. It’s fine, though, and passes just as easily as it comes about. Luckily, Bucky’s just a bit less stubborn. Luckily, Steve never holds much of a grudge.

“Stop it,” Bucky says, shrugging out from under Steve’s hand. “You’re distracting. I’m doing something new here. It’ll make us rich.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve knows he’s lost now, that the smile he’s been fighting has settled onto his face openly.

“You bet. Cookin’ without lookin’, I’ll call it.”

Steve’s laugh emerges closer to a snort than he’d like it to when he tries to hold it back. “And how’re you going to sell that one?”

Bucky shrugs. “I’ll figure it out. Haven’t gotten that far in the planning yet.”

“Of course you will,” Steve says, moving back into Bucky’s space. He lets him this time, lets Steve’s hands resettle on his back under his shirt, winds his own arms around Steve to pull him close so they’re front-to-front in front of the still cold stove.

“All good?” Bucky asks, and Steve knows he’s referring to earlier in the day, to his stubborn annoyance and their stupid circular argument about their neighbors and Europe and everything else.

“You’re so annoying,” he says as an answer, but there’s an obvious fondness there in the words.

“I know. You’re pretty awful yourself,” he gets back. Steve pushes his forehead against Bucky harder for a moment in reprimand, even though he was the one to start it. Bucky just tightens his grip, ducks down after a moment to kiss him softly on his left eye, his lips. Steve lets him, pushes back with just enough pressure and for just long enough for it to start getting heated before he pulls away.

“Make me food,” he says, stepping away even though he would really rather not.

It’s almost worth it just to see Bucky look a bit dazed, confused for a moment before he says, “I hate you.”

Steve just smiles and goes back to where he was sitting at the table.

Bucky watches him a minute longer before he turns around to face the stove to prepare whatever it was he decided to cook, making much less noise now that he can actually see what he’s doing.

 

**now.**

Four days after Natasha tells him to fix things, Steve sits down in a café with Sam.

“You’ve got to move forward, not keep looking back,” Sam says, pouring sugar into his second cup of coffee before meeting Steve’s gaze, steady and honest.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, as if that’s simple, because there’s little else to do but acknowledge the truth of the statement. The single syllable comes out sounding more downtrodden than he means it to, almost self-pitying, and he feels a flash of annoyance at himself for it. Again. As usual. He’s spent the past days incredibly frustrated with himself, angry that any time he tries to approach Bucky he doesn’t know how.

Sam winces in sympathy, because he gets it, Steve knows, understands how difficult it is even if he’s never been faced with the same situation Steve is facing. Who has, really? It’s not exactly a common situation, what Bucky and Steve have gone through.

“Does he leave the apartment?” he asks next, apparently deciding to go for a different approach.

Steve shrugs. “Not when I’m there.”

“Well, maybe that’s the next step. Get him out experiencing the world. He seems stable?”

“He seems stable,” Steve responds verbatim, trying hard not to let his reluctance seep through into his words. What if Bucky just leaves, then? What if he thinks Steve encouraging him to get out of the apartment makes him think Steve doesn’t want him around? What if he’s got it wrong and Bucky isn’t better, if somehow Steve pushing him toward something isn’t what he wants?

Sam picks up on it anyway. “You can’t be his whole world,” he says, level and honest.

“I’m the only person he has.” It comes out quiet and small, and Steve hates it because of the way he says it and because it’s not entirely related, because he can’t stop it from being put out there anyway because it sits heavy all of the time. He doesn’t mean to say that he wants to be Bucky’s whole world either, that he’s reluctant to let that go, but, well.

“But he’s not the only one you have,” Sam reassures, reading between Steve’s words like he always does. It’s uttered easily and seriously. “We’ll figure this out, Steve.”

He doesn’t want that “we” to be as much a relief as it is. It’s not Sam’s burden to take on, Steve knows, even if he is willing. He’s already done so much and gained so little from it that Steve knows he won’t be able to take him up on the offer. Sam probably knows it too, and will force it later anyway and probably succeed. Steve’s not, barring the serum, a very strong person.

Sam apparently takes pity on him then and redirects the conversation to lighter topics in his own life. It’s not until after when they are stopped at the corner where they have to go in opposite directions to their respective homes that Steve says, attempting to inject as much sincerity as he feels into it, “Thank you.”

“No problem.” Sam grasps his shoulder and Steve tries not to lean into the comfort of it. Sam, of course, notices, and shakes his head. “Man, stop trying to be cool. Come here.” And he pulls Steve forward into a hug, and it’s not something they do, really, but it’s not uncomfortable. It’s nice.

Steve pulls away after a few moments and tries to mentally put himself back together. Sam doesn’t let go of his right shoulder yet, asks, “Good?”

“Yeah,” he answers, taking a deep breath through his nose.

“For now,” Sam says, giving Steve a small, sympathetic sort of smile and squeezes his shoulder gently before letting go. “Now get back to your boy. Talk to him. See what happens.”

 

**then.**

“I’m not sure I know what to do without you here,” Steve says. It’s two days after Bucky got his orders, the middle of the night and they have been, until now, silent but awake in bed, skin-to-skin and unable to ignore one another’s tension.

Bucky doesn’t answer, just pulls him closer where they had fallen a bit apart. Steve’s nearly fully on top of him now, their legs looped and arms holding on.

 

**now.**

Steve nearly drops the book he is nominally reading when Bucky suddenly appears in front of him. It’s late evening and dark outside. Steve’s forgotten to turn a light on again, since he can see well enough anyway. Bucky usually makes some noise when he approaches, but for some reason this time he’s slipped into being as close to silent as a person can get.

“Are you avoiding me?” Bucky asks, and it’s so straightforward and so sudden after so long spent skirting around everything that it throws Steve off, leads to an honest answer, which is quite simply:

“Yes.”

Bucky looks hurt, briefly, a flash that’s gone as soon as Steve can notice it, and that’s strange too, that any emotion makes it past Bucky’s careful mask. He’s meeting Steve’s eyes straight-on and it’s disarming and too much. He looks determined, and Steve’s familiar enough with him still to know he’s not escaping this conversation, not without it all going worse than it was before.

“Do you want me to leave?” Bucky asks next.

His answer is prompt, again, simple. “No,” he says, more forcefully than he means to, enough so that Bucky looks a bit surprised.

“All right,” he responds with a resolute nod. A pause, and then: “Why are you avoiding me?” and Steve can read under the words, senses the plea, the “What can I do?” It’s both nice to hear that Bucky wants to try and guilt-inducing, because Steve doesn’t know the answer to that unspoken question at all.

“You avoided me before, since DC,” Steve says instead of actually answering the question, and it is 100% the wrong thing and petty and not what he meant to say. He regrets it instantly.

Bucky’s eyes narrow. “That was different,” he says, and there’s an undercurrent of annoyance there that is completely understandable but also oddly heartening because they’ve both been so silent and careful to avoid anything that might upset the other that it’s reassuring to hear some honesty, even if it’s not the kind Steve would want. It’s progress, though.

“God, I know. I’m sorry.” He rubs a hand over his face and tries to push aside the part of him that is screaming to leave this conversation.

“We’re in DC now and I’m not avoiding you. Does that matter?” Bucky asks, and maybe Steve should have annoyed him earlier to get this conversation rolling, except that he still isn’t entirely sure that his annoying Bucky won’t make him leave.

“Of course it does,” he hurries to reassure, looking up again. “It matters a lot.”

“Then stop it,” Bucky says. “Stop acting like I’m going to attack you if you do something wrong.”

And it hurts, in a sympathetic way, to think that Bucky thinks that, that he thinks Steve is afraid of him or what he might do. That he has spent all this time thinking that. It’s not like that at all. Steve’s more afraid of himself than he is of Bucky. That he’s given off that impression makes him feel horrible, and then he feels worse because he keeps making it about himself when it’s not, not at all.

“I don’t think you’ll hurt me,” he says, simply, because he doesn’t know how to say all the rest. It’s Bucky’s turn to look away this time, and Steve can’t tell if he believes him or not. He doesn’t think he does, so he repeats, again, “I don’t. You won’t. I’ve never thought that.” He still wants to leave, a bit, but he feels the conflicting urge to walk over and touch his friend, to try to reassure him in a manner more similar to the way they used to. He can’t and he doesn’t, though. He grips the book still in his hands harder instead.

“So you’re just avoiding me for no reason. That’s so much better.” The response is sarcastic and annoyed, but he also sounds hurt, a bit, and Steve hates himself a lot for putting that there.

They’re silent again for a beat, as Steve tries to come up with a way to explain. He fails. “I don’t know why, Buck,” he says eventually, and it’s only partly the truth. “I just--I can’t wrap my mind around it sometimes, that you’re here.”

“So you avoid me,” Bucky says, like it’s one of the more idiotic things he’s heard. Which is fair.

Steve shrugs. “You deserve a chance to figure things out on your own. You don’t need me messing that up.” That bit of honesty is surprisingly easy, in the end.

Bucky turns back to look at him, finally, the bare expression of incredulity on his face something Steve hasn’t seen since before the war. “What do you think I spent the last year and a half doing? I was figuring things out. If I didn’t want to be here, Steve, I wouldn’t be. I had enough time to decide on that.”

“I--” Steve cuts himself off before he gets very far because he realizes he doesn’t have a proper response. Because of course he’s been thinking about it all wrong. He usually does, but he never really learns. He just did it again, made it about himself when obviously Bucky’s had over a year to think things through. Steve’s not going to just mess that all up singlehandedly with one sentence. Or at least he hopes, and Bucky doesn’t seem to think that’s the case.

And that’s when Steve realizes it: He’s just going to have to trust Bucky. It’s silly, because if someone had asked, he probably would have said there’s no one he trusts more. But it’s also not Bucky that’s the problem. Bucky’s the one perfectly willing to try to move forward with Steve, wherever forward might be. Steve’s just stuck.

It lodges in his throat, the self-annoyance that he just can’t get this right. He’s tripping himself up, just like how how his body used to hold him back before the serum.

And then he does the worst thing he could: He leaves again. He has enough time to see Bucky’s un-masked annoyance and hurt before the apartment door shuts after him.

His fingers skitter over his phone screen as he dials Sam’s number from the building hallway, and he must say something, because then he hears Sam saying, “Woah, hey, breathe for me here.”

And it’s not so much that Steve’s having some sort of panic attack as it is that he’s simply got so many things going on in his head that he’s not at all sure how to sort them out, and apparently that comes at the expense of breathing normally.

He does, eventually, figure out how he’s supposed to be breathing in between his frantic words.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve ruined it all,” he says.

“You’ve been gone, what, five? ten minutes? Get back in there. Say you’re sorry. Do what you’ve got to do. You still have time,” Sam responds, sounding much less worried about Steve’s future than Steve feels the situation warrants.

Steve must not answer fast enough, because he then adds, “Hang up the phone, Rogers, and get back in there.”

And weirdly, that does it. It’s enough of a straightforward command for his brain to hang onto it, somehow believe it’s manageable.

“I’m sorry,” he says, feels he has to before he hangs up.

“You’re good, man. You’re figuring it out.” Sam’s words are said with such easy confidence that Steve almost believes him.

He reenters the apartment 8 minutes after he left it. Bucky’s still standing in the same spot, but he’s facing the door now. Relief passes over his face before he can hide it, and Steve tries not to let the guilt ruin him again.

“I’m sorry,” he says, for the second time in as many minutes. He doesn’t know how to say all the things he is sorry for so he just leaves it at that and hopes he’s managed to convey it all simply through sincerity and the fact that he probably looks like an apologetic mess.

“I know,” Bucky says. “Don’t do it again.”

Steve almost laughs, not because it’s funny but because he’s feeling a bit hysterical and more than a bit on edge. “I’ll try not to.”

“Promise?” It’s an echo of when they were kids, when they’d ask one another to promise stupid things just to prove a point, except that this time it’s not stupid at all. It’s also a hint as to how much Bucky remembers, at least in part.

“Yeah, I promise.” Steve isn’t sure where to go from here, how to fix the past week and all of the time before that. He doesn’t know how to simply exist, to be there for Bucky and stop trying to fix what he doesn’t need to, not really.

Bucky saves him the trouble and walks closer. He takes Steve’s hand, gives him enough time to retreat before taking another step forward.

“Can I--” he starts, and Steve nods when he has barely started the question, and Bucky steps forward the last bit, pulls Steve against him, simply holds him there. He has to fight not to simply collapse forward into him. He’s different, of course. He’s a bit larger, a bit different in muscle tone and form where his body has shaped itself to balance out the weight of his left arm. His grip is stronger. He smells the same but slightly different as well. The decades have left their mark, but they have on Steve, too, and it’s fine. It’s exceptional, really. It’s still Bucky under it all, irrevocably him, and he’s there, right in front of Steve and touching him.

He tightens his grip without really meaning to, and they just stand there in the entryway of the apartment, breathing and holding on, for a long while.

 

**then.**

When Bucky’s gone, staying with his family or off to a war Steve hasn’t gotten to yet, Steve curls into the middle of the bed where he can’t feel the edges and it seems slightly more secure than the sudden largeness of the rest of the apartment. He tells himself not to be stupid, that Bucky will be back and if he isn’t, well, they’ll work it out, find one another somehow anyway.

 

**now.**

Steve almost forgot what it was like, having another person in his bed, except that it’s also remarkably familiar for all that it’s been years no matter which way you look at them, frozen or unfrozen.

Bucky’s soft beside him, his breathing slow and even and quiet, his body relaxed, his clothing worn and comfortable in a way that means it must be Steve’s because most of what Bucky has in the apartment has only had a month to get worn. Steve’s awake for no particular reason, woken up by some sound outside or something innocuous in a dream. He could easily fall back into sleep except that he doesn’t particularly want to right now, because he doesn’t often catch Bucky asleep as he’s usually the one to sleep first and wake last. For all that Bucky’s better he’s still not 100%. Possibly he never will be, and this will just be his baseline going forward. It’s not horrible by far, but he sleeps lightly and infrequently, has trouble with most people and with nightmares and memories that he had no choice in but that filtered back in with all of the positive and much older.

It’s good, really, much better than any other time since Steve woke up from the ice, but it just means that he doesn’t usually catch Bucky at his most relaxed like this, on his side with his hand lightly resting on Steve’s forearm and his foot overlapping Steve’s shin, two points of contact that ground them both.

It’s chaste until it’s not, until another month or so later and another quiet night when Steve wakes up for another unspecified reason. Bucky is awake shortly after, woken up by some movement of Steve’s, probably.

“Morning,” he says, for all that he probably knows instinctively it’s just after 3 in the morning and that they therefore won’t actually get out of bed yet.

And Steve can’t help it. He just smiles in response and moves forward, and Bucky somehow knows and meets him in the middle.

It’s shocking, kissing Bucky again, like they had never stopped, didn’t have a generation between the last and this one. It’s silly and a bit romantic, Steve thinks, in a way he would normally not forgive himself for, but it’s true nevertheless and he can’t find fault in it anyway, not when it feels like things are coming full-circle again, but in a different way, maybe, not better or worse or anything else but simply as it is.

There’s a break where Bucky pushes, rolls so he’s on top, leaves Steve’s lips to kiss the corner of his mouth, the right side of his jaw, where his jaw meets ear meets neck, down the line to his collar.

And it’s better like this anyway because Steve can get his hands under Bucky’s shirt, move them up his waist to his back. Bucky doesn’t even hesitate like Steve thought maybe he might, just lets go of Steve long enough to pull his shirt up and off so it can be dropped beside the bed, nudges Steve up enough so that his can also be removed and added to the pile before pushing him back down into place.

They’re slow and they’re not, measuring what’s familiar and what’s new, filing away what needs to be re-explored later. Steve comes first, Bucky’s right hand around him and his left settled by his shoulder, his mouth sitting just against Steve’s jaw, his breathing heavy against him. Bucky’s not far behind once Steve collects himself enough to refocus. He muffles his moan against Steve’s neck, both of them too used to years of trying to hide what they were doing to be very vocal.

Steve eventually prods Bucky into getting up to get something to clean them up with. He disappears into the ensuite, runs the tap once, twice, returns with a damp cloth. He runs it over Steve enough that he won’t wake up totally uncomfortable before throwing the cloth toward the doorway of the bathroom and falling back onto the bed. His skin is slightly damp now in spots, cool against Steve’s skin where he settles back over his right side.

He tucks his face into Steve’s neck. “You smell like you, but like you mixed with the 21st century,” he says, his voice muffled by the bedding and Steve’s skin.

It’s so unexpected that Steve can’t help but laugh. “What does the 21st century smell like?” he asks.

Bucky’s answer is accompanied by a movement that approximates a shrug. “I don’t know. Like it does.”

“That’s descriptive.” Steve brings his arm that’s not trapped under Bucky up so he can run his hand through his hair and down to settle on the back of his right shoulder, if for no other reason than he can, that he wants to.

“I’m not up to describing scents right now.” His voice is lazy and relaxed in a way Steve rarely hears it, even back before the war.

“You started it,” he says, but lets it go then, lets them drift into silence.

 

**now.**

“Stop it,” Bucky snaps, in a moment when Steve accidentally starts retreating again, when he doubts himself and the situation and starts to silently sit on it. It’s not so much that he means to let the past run around in his head, but just that sometimes he can’t really stop it, accidentally finds fault where there’s no fault or simply finds it all more than a little bit too much. He’s glared at from where Bucky’s sitting on the floor against the large living room window. It’s an indulgence, that window, but there’s nothing directly opposite for a couple of blocks and so Steve (and later Bucky) has been able to ignore the threat inherent in an easily-seen-through window.

Steve freezes, even though he wasn’t moving much in the first place, just rearranging a bookshelf simply to have something to do with his hands and to avoid the urge to leave the apartment. He’s not sure at first what Bucky is referring to, whether he simply dislikes Steve’s restlessness or the rearrangement of a previously learned bookshelf or something else entirely.

“You don’t even notice you’ve been doing it again, do you?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer or clarify and just tags on, “Get over here, you idiot. I’m not going to you.”

Steve sets down the books he was going to move next and obeys, although he doesn’t sit down, just stands beside Bucky. The sun filtering through and covering his legs is warm enough to be pleasant but not uncomfortable, a nice contrast to the chill of winter.

“You’re the worst. You promised you wouldn’t do this anymore,” Bucky says. It takes a moment for Steve to connect the dots and realize that Bucky’s referring to Steve’s unintentional and silent retreat the past couple of days. He feels a fresh wash of guilt that he hopes doesn’t show too much on his face.

“You’re so mean to me,” he says instead, attempting to inject a certain amount of joking complaint into it. He falls a bit short but he’s not entirely sure he can do much better at the moment.

Bucky smiles a bit anyway, runs his right hand down the back of Steve’s leg from his knee to settle on the swell of his calf. “You don’t listen to much else, when you’re like this. Never have.”

He’s not wrong, and Steve just hums his agreement instead of saying so outright.

“You’re fine. I’m fine. Everything right now is fine, so stop it. Get out of your own head. There’s only so much time we can both spend in our respective heads before driving one another even more insane than we already are,” Bucky says.

“Yeah, I know,” he says, looking away from the window and down to Bucky. He is looking up at him, leaning back on his free hand to balance his weight.

“Good,” he says, and leaves it at that, sits up straighter so he can look back out the window but doesn’t let go of Steve’s leg, his touch through the material of his pants light but undoubtedly present.

Eventually he lets himself sit, Bucky’s hand moving with him to settle on his knee instead, and they just sit in the sun, silent and together and, for the moment at least, completely fine.


End file.
